My Friends the Miss Boyds

by Jane Duncan

  My mother sat down on my bed and said: “Poor Miss Violet. It is kind of you to be thinking about her, Janet. What were you thinking?”

  “Could we not get a real baby for her? If she had a real baby, she would have to stop singing that funny song because the baby wouldn’t like it.”

  “You think not?”

  I was positive. “No real baby would like it—like—like a bodach keening.”

  “Well, I’ll have to find out. Sir Torquil is getting a real baby for her, you know.”

  “He is? When?”

  “Just as soon as he can—he is away in Glasgow now, seeing if he can get one.”

  “From the orphanage?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will he get her own proper one?”

  “Likely he will. That is what he wants, and Sir Torquil is a bit of a lad for getting what he wants.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “And you mark my words, Mother, when she gets her own baby it won’t let her sing that song to it.”

  “Maybe you are right,” my mother said. “Are you going to sleep now?”

  “Yes. Good night, Mother.”

  She went away, carrying the candle, and I did not hear the eerie song that night. Indeed, I never heard it again.

  * * * * *

  That winter was unlike all the winters I had ever known. We had the ‘tattie holidays’, but there was not to be a coal boat because of some funny reason to do with ‘after the war’, and the coal came in to Fortavoch (pronounced Fort-a-ach, with the accent thrown back) Station, the rail terminus that was twelve miles by road from Poyntdale, and we children did not get a holiday. Dominie Stevenson said that if the engine that pulled the coal in had been there it would have been worth seeing, but it had pulled out again in the middle of the night, and who would go twelve miles to see a few carts like big barrows sitting on rails in a place called a siding? From Reachfar we sent Dick and Betsy to help with the carting, but Dulcie did not go, for she was not strong enough for the big loads and the long hard haul. And none of the people like Johnnie Greycairn and Diamond went—poor Diamond was too small for a worthwhile load and his feet would never have stood twelve miles of hard County Road there and another twelve miles back. Tom did not enjoy it at all. He told me it was not at all like the coal boat and ‘chust a long, hard drag day after day and no enchoyment in it for man or beast’.

  And it was a terribly wet winter again too, after that first short early snow when we gathered the sheep in. When it melted away there was no frost, no sliding, no more snow—nothing but rain and sleet driving in my face in the morning all the way to Achcraggan, and driving rain and sleet on my back all the way home at night. When we were into December Doctor Mackay arranged for Alasdair to walk with me up as far as the Smithy, then I would walk west to the Poyntdale shepherd’s house with John-the-Smith’s apprentice and somewhere between there and Reachfar Tom, George or my father would meet me.

  There were times when I felt like a travelling tinker, always going along in the lee of the hedges with my shoulders hunched against the driving rain, but I knew I was much better off than the tinkers, really, for I had a lot of places with good sound roofs and good fires where I was welcome. Still, it was a scattered kind of feeling. In this sort of rain you could not keep dry, no matter which route you took. I had a pair of shoes and socks in the dominie’s press at school, I had a pair of slippers and socks at Miss Tulloch’s where I went to get a hot meal at dinner-times, and I had a pair of ‘moor’ boots at Doctor Mackay’s in case my morning pair were not dry at night. I seemed to spend half my time wriggling into and out of my oilskins and sou’-wester and ‘changing my feet’ as Tom called it. And, also, as Tom said, my grandmother ‘was as short in the temper as cat’s hair’.

  My grandmother was ‘awful fond’ of my mother, and at no time could ‘Ealaisaidh Dhu’, as she called her in the Gaelic for ‘Dark Elizabeth’, do any wrong, and the wet weather did not agree with my mother’s delicate health, so my grandmother was anxious. My grandmother did not like feeling anxious, and she did not like the wet weather either, just for its own ‘clarty’ sake, and the only persons to whom she spoke a civil word these winter days were Dark Elizabeth and my grandfather. The rest of us, it seemed, were not only responsible for the clutter of wet clothes and boots that hung around the house, we were also responsible for the wind, sleet and rain that made the clothes and boots wet. We were never happy, she said, unless we were ‘clarting about up to our backsides in wet heather’ and she had always told us, she said, that ‘Sheep were useless brutes that brought nothing but ill to the Highlands’ and, she said, ‘Why that little bairn has to be walking eight miles in a day in this weather to be learning that outlandish Latin passes my comprehension’. She usually said all this on a Saturday, when the wet clothes for the week were at their peak, and Tom, George and I would take refuge in the barn to be ‘out of her road’.

  People ‘in her road’ was the worst feature, for her, of the wet weather. My father and George were at home more days than they were out, for no work could be done at Dinchory or Poyntdale on these days; my grandfather was permanently in his chair at the kitchen fire; my mother was at the parlour fire, sewing, to be ‘out of the draughts’, and my grandmother had no place where she could move about freely and expend her tremendous energy.

  “God, man, George,” said Tom one Saturday when the three of us were sitting in the straw of the barn after a particularly vicious tirade, “it’s the Ould Leddy that doesna like the sheep!”

  “She likes fine the money they bring in, the ould harridan!” said George.

  “She’s not ould enough to be minding on them Clearances I’ve read about,” said Tom. “What spite is it that she’ll be having at the poor craiturs?”

  “Och, it’s the Clearances that’s in it, right enough, Tom. Folk doesna chust mind on the things that happened in their own lifetime, not among people like us, whatever. The hatred o’ the sheep was put into the Ould Leddy as a bairn, by folk that could mind on the burning o’ the crofts when they were bairns, maybe. You and me is not as Highland as my mother, Tom. This land of Reachfar, although it is not very good, is rich ground compared with the glens o’ the West, and the old people out of the West has long, hard, Highland memories. She doesna like the sheep and she doesna like what she calls the Government and she never will. . . . But she’s clever, Tom—she is as fly as a badger.”

  “Aye, she is clever enough,” Tom agreed. “It’s a peety though, the way she will not be learning Janet and me the Gaelic. Funny, you will never hear her at it now except when she is that angry that she forgets herself. Yet, when I came here as a boy she used to be at a lot o’ the Gaelic words.”

  “Aye, but she sees now that it is the tongue o’ the poor. She sees that the English tongue is winning, and she is going to see that the like o’ Janet here is on the winning side. She can see a long way ahead, Tom.”

  “Too danged far, whiles,” Tom agreed. “Sometimes even myself will be thinking the way Hamish the Tinker does that the Ould Leddy has the Sight.”

  I sat brushing the dogs with the stable brush and cutting the lumps of mud out of their coats with the kitchen scissors, and listening to every word, for I was always interested in hearing any member of my family discussed as if they were persons, and especially my grandmother. It was only now, at nine years old, that I was learning that my grandmother was a person at all. Hitherto she had been the Law, a Power as unapproachable as the Mystery that made the earth turn from spring round to winter, a Light as blinding as that which, the Bible said, shone round the Throne of God.

  “But she is fair devilish the now,” said George. “I suppose it is the wet weather, but there is an uneasiness about her. You notice how she will be sitting by her lone at the fire of an evening for a whilie after the rest of us is in bed? I never like to see her at that caper. There is always some bad comes out of it.”

  I did not like this. This was Going Too Far. My granny was my grandmother and an
ould harridan, often, and maybe she had the Sight, but no Bad ever came out of her.

  “That’s lies, George Sandison!” I said. “No bad ever comes out of my granny! And when she is an ould harridan and be at you, you’ll be needing it!”

  They began to laugh. “Ach, you are as Highland as your granny with the temper that’s in you!” George told me. “But I didna mean that the bad would come out of your granny.”

  “What, then, did you mean?”

  “That she is feeling something bad in the air. Maybe it is chust the weather—goodness knows, it is bad enough.”

  “What kind of bad, George?”

  “It is hard to put words on it. And maybe I am chust being a little Highland myself.” He shifted his big shoulders inside his jacket.

  “But I mind, Tom, that the last time she was like this was the time Kennie the Shepherd took seeck and she went to see him when he was getting over it.”

  “Poor Kennie!” said Tom.

  “You mean, somebody is going to die?” I said.

  They looked startled, both of them, and Tom said: “What capers is that that you are saying?”

  “You never knew Kennie the Shepherd!” said George.

  “But he died!”

  “So does everybody when they get old.”

  “Kennie wasn’t old!”

  “Av coorse he was!” said Tom scornfully. “Ninety if he was a day!”

  “No, man, Kennie was nearer the hundred,” said George solemnly. “The poor ould craitur! Och, aye, he was a terrible ould mannie!” I had a suspicion that this was a Pack of Lies—Kennie had been young—but I did not want to face it.

  “It will be old Granny Macintosh that Granny is seeing about,” I said. “She is nearly the hundred now and sometimes she will not be knowing Jean when Jean is washing her face for her. My mother says that it’s not sad at all when an old, old person like that dies.”

  “That is what I will be thinking, too,” said George.

  “And me, forbye and besides,” said Tom. “Are ye finding any fleas on that dogs?”

  “Not yet.”

  “This dirty weather and them in the barn so much is bad for breeding fleas,” Tom said. “People needs the air about them to keep them right. George, do ye mind on the fleas in Sandy Bawn’s hoosie when he was old?”

  “Lord, aye! They would be hopping up the whitewash o’ the wall like a battalion o’ the Seaforths on the march.”

  “There was a thing I was reading in the paper,” said Tom next, “that is that foolish that you’ll not know whether to be believing it or not. It seems there is a mannie in America that has a circus o’ fleas.”

  “Ach away with you, Tom!” George said. “That canna be right. Where could anybody be making a circus o’ fleas as if they was wise, like horses?”

  “It said it in the paper, whatever—that he has them running races and a-all and that people will be paying him money to see them at it.”

  “I’ll not believe it,” said George firmly. “Where would people—even American people—be paying good money to see a puckle fleas loupin’? I saw the circus, in Inverness, man, before the war, and it’s horses, real bonnie piebalds they were and clowns and lions in a cage. Dang it! They’ll put any trock in the paper!”

  “The Romans had a circus,” I told them.

  “Do ye tell me that now?” said Tom. “Now, that’s real interring—them old Romans thought o’ near everything. Had they horses at it?”

  “Oh yes, for their chariot races. And they had men fighting each other and men fighting lions—gladiators, they were calling them.”

  “They was cruel booggers in a way, too, the Romans,” George said.

  “The men would be getting clawed, whiles, likely?”

  “Oh yes, and killed as well, George. And at some of their circuses they even threw the Christian people to the lions to eat because they would not worship the Roman gods.”

  Tom took his pipe out of his mouth. “Now, that is chust near enough putting me clean off that Romans, clever as they was,” he said. “For I never could abide that kind of narrow-mindedness and interferesomeness. What was it o’ their business what gods people would be worshipping? There is times when I chust take a fair scunder at releegion altogether. It chust makes more trouble than it’s worth. Och, I’ll be going to the kirk to please the Ould Leddy and the Reverend Roderick is a fine eddicated man with his Latin and Greek and Hebrew and a-all, and to be listening to him speaking for a bit hour in the week canna hurt a body. But dang it if I would be fighting about releegion and feeding lions with people about it, for your common sense tells you that that is chust not reasonable!”

  I was astonished, for I had never heard Tom be so vehement about anything in all my life, hardly.

  “Folk is inclined to think they are far too bliddy clever,” he continued, “with all their knowing what is right and what is wrong for other people. If they would chust think about their own right and wrong there would be far less bother in the world and fighting and badness and people being driven wrong in the head! And if that Romans with all their cleverness couldna think of a better way of having a circus than feeding people to lions about releegion, they deserved for their place to burn to the ground while that mannie played his fiddle! For myself, I would rather pay a penny to see the American mannie’s fleas.—But if it was me that was having a circus, I would have Betsy with ribbons in her mane——”

  “So this is where you are at your blethers!” said my grandmother, sticking her white head in over the half door of the barn. “You would be too busy, the lot of you, no doubt, to notice that the rain was off! What about the horses? Are they to kick their way out o’ the stable for an airing?”

  The two men shot through the passage to the stable. I ducked under my grandmother’s arm to open the gate of the Little Fieldie for them, and after the horses were through and running madly round on the wet, muddy turf, Tom looked at the sky and said: “Aye, there’s a change working in the weather, right enough, George.”

  “I’m not seeing bliddy much difference in the Ould Leddy’s temper, though, said George.

  The weather, in the course of that night and the next day which was a Sunday, took a complete turn, and the snow started to fall early on Sunday morning, so it was decided not to drive down to church. It was a long grey Sunday, which George, Tom and I spent in Tom’s attic room, which was next to mine, and the furthest inhabited room in the house from the kitchen which only barely contained my grandmother. We went up there at about seven in the morning and all three of us took off our shoes and got into Tom’s bed after being told ‘for the love of goodness sake to get out from under her feet.’

  “You know what the Ould Leddy puts me in mind of, George?” Tom asked.

  “What?”

  “The horses, the day o’ the Armistice.”

  “Man, you’re right. As if she didna know hersel’ what is wrong with her.”

  “Aye, it’s instink—like.”

  “Aye. Well, we better chust be stopping up here out of her road. Man, Tom, it’s fine and warm up here in this bed o’ yours.”

  “Aye—chust hand me that boxie with my teebacca. Well, well, we’re missing the Reverend Roderick the-day. At the thirtieth chapter off Profferbs——” Tom began, and we had ourselves a fine sermon, for Tom could ‘do’ the Reverend Roderick to the life and was not stuck now, even, for the odd erudite quotation ‘from the Latin’.

  It snowed all day long, and I began to grow anxious, for a heavy continuous fall like this could put my going to school in jeopardy, but as the light faded it began to freeze and when we three went out with the lanterns to feed the animals in the evening we could walk dry-shod over the crisp, frozen snow. It snowed again in the night, froze again, and by morning the scullery window—the only window in the house that looked to the north—looked nowhere except into a deep, frozen drift. It was a fine day for going to school, and I set off just at first light, but by the time I reached Achcraggan the sun was up
and gleaming over the lovely white world.

  About ten in the morning, though, a queer thing happened. Sir Torquil and my father drove up to the school in Sir Torquil’s trap with my Fly and Sir Torquil’s retriever at their feet, and the dominie told all us Big Ones of the Top Class to put our coats and things on and come out to the playshed. There were about fourteen of us, Alasdair and I being the youngest, and when we were all lined up the dominie said: “A most serious thing has happened. Miss Violet Boyd is lost and everybody is looking for her. Now, you boys and girls know your countryside, and all the places where you play. She may have fallen over the rocks—Jamie Ross, you and your sister know every hole in the rocks—look in them all.She may have fallen into a ditch, she may be buried in a snowdrift. I want you all to go to the places you know best, taking great care of yourselves, and try to find her. The ones that have dogs, go home and get them. Nobody but Janet and Alasdair is to go up Reachfar way and I’ll take the cane to any other person who is seen up there. The storm is bad on the hill, and Reachfar and Greycairn have plenty of men out. Now, when you hear the church bell ringing, go home, for that will mean that Miss Violet has been found. And all of you, be home before dark. Mind that now. Before dark. If you find her, run to the nearest place you know or tell the first grown-up person that you meet. That’s all. Off you go.”

  My father let Fly jump out of the trap and she, Alasdair and I set off. All day we hunted up and down the watercourses, poked sticks into snowdrifts, looked behind every bush and boulder, and we covered the Reachfar Burn from the spring where it rose to the sawmill on Poyntdale, and found no Miss Violet. Periodically we would meet other searchers; the sawyers from Sir Torquil’s mill were dragging the dam; the fishermen were sailing round the shore and exploring the beach; Tom, George, Johnnie Greycairn and their dogs were black pinpoints away on the Greycairn moor. When Alasdair and I passed the smithy or any of the cottages we would get scones and a warm drink, for every house had a kettle on the boil and a bed ready, but, somehow, you could not eat, for the short day would soon be hidden in the dark and Miss Violet would be out in it all alone, and still the church bell stayed silent. I gave a sob as Alasdair and I, with Fly ahead of us, beat and poked at the deep drifts on the north side of the march dyke between Greycairn and Reachfar.